subject becomes changed for the time being; he believes himself to
be whatever the operator tells him he is: he is a swimmer breasting the
waves, a bird flying in the air, a soldier in the tumult of battle, an
Indian stealthily tracking his victim: in short, for the time being, he
identifies himself with any personality that is impressed upon him by the
will of the operator, and acts the part with inimitable accuracy. But the
experiments of hypnotism go further than this, and show the existence in
the subjective mind of powers far transcending any exercised by the
objective mind through the medium of the physical senses; powers of
thought-reading, of thought-transference, of clairvoyance, and the like,
all of which are frequently manifested when the patient is brought into the
higher mesmeric state; and we have thus experimental proof of the existence
in ourselves of transcendental faculties the full development and conscious
control of which would place us in a perfectly new sphere of life.

But it should be noted that the control must be _our own_ and not that of
any external intelligence whether in the flesh or out of it.

But perhaps the most important fact which hypnotic experiments have
demonstrated is that the subjective mind is the builder of the body. The
subjective entity in the patient is able to diagnose the character of the
disease from which he is suffering and to point out suitable remedies,
indicating a physiological knowledge exceeding that of the most highly
trained physicians, and also a knowledge of the correspondences between
diseased conditions of the bodily organs and the material remedies which
can afford relief. And from this it is but a step further to those numerous
instances in which it entirely dispenses with the use of material remedies
and itself works directly on the organism, so that complete restoration to
health follows as the result of the suggestions of perfect soundness made
by the operator to the patient while in the hypnotic state.

Now these are facts fully established by hundreds of experiments conducted
by a variety of investigators in different parts of the world, and from
them we may draw two inferences of the highest importance: one, that the
subjective mind is in itself absolutely impersonal, and the other that it
is the builder of the body, or in other words it is the creative power in
the individual. That it is impersonal in itself is shown by its readiness
to assume any